Sfax eats differently from the rest of Tunisia: saltier, spicier, built on olive oil from its own groves and fish from the Gulf of Gabès. Three days here run from dawn produce markets through medina home cooking to charcoal shacks at Sidi Mansour.
The produce market spilling out of Bab Jebli gate trades from 06:00 and peaks by 08:00: olives cured a dozen ways, harissa pounded to order, salted mullet sold for chermoula, and pomegranates from the coastal gardens.
The medina's covered fish souk sells the morning catch — rouget, dorade, seiche and octopus — and the grill counters at the back will cook whatever you buy for a few dinars, served with harissa, lemon and tabouna bread.
The arcaded market beside the Great Mosque is where Sfaxians buy their blends: bharat with dried rosebuds, tabil crushed with coriander and caraway, saffron threads, and the sun-dried chillies that become the city's harissa.
Built into the medina rampart beside Bab Diwan, this tiled café serves mint tea with toasted pine nuts and thick assir zgougou made from Aleppo pine nuts; the terrace tables sit directly on top of the old Arab wall.
Masmoudi opened in Sfax in 1961 and turned the city's baklawa into a national brand. The Sfax shop sells kaak warka, samsa, ghraiba and mlabbes by weight; a mixed box is the standard gift Tunisians carry home from here.
A long-running seafood house on Rue Habib Maazoun where you pick the day's fish from ice at the door and it is priced by weight — grilled dorade, salt-baked loup, and ojja with shrimp and merguez served in a copper pan.
A restored merchant house inside the medina serving Sfaxian home cooking rarely written on menus: chermoula of caramelised onion and raisin with salted mullet, madfouna with chard, and marqet jelbana, eaten in the tiled courtyard.
A neighbourhood room off Rue Patrice Lumumba where locals order kamounia, mloukhia and charcoal-grilled sea bream well after dark; mechouia salad, brik à l'oeuf and cured olives arrive at the table before you ask for them.
The breakfast counters along Rue Mongi Slim ladle lablabi — chickpea broth poured over torn bread with cumin, harissa and a poached egg — beside fryers turning out fricassé rolls stuffed with tuna, potato, olives and egg.
Sfax's fishing port lands the Gulf of Gabès catch each morning; the auction hall is open to walk through and the shacks outside grill octopus and sardines over charcoal while boats from Kerkennah unload crates beside you.
The village north of the city gave Tunisia its most famous song and its plainest fish lunch: charcoal-grilled sardines, mullet and squid at seafront shacks, sold by the kilo with slata mechouia, chilli and flat bread.
The 1920s colonial hotel on Avenue Habib Thameur keeps one of the few proper bars in Sfax, pouring Celtia beer and Mornag reds under stained glass and dark wood — a rare licensed room in a notably conservative city.